you need to be able to see the prints on the 'infeed woodboard' through the fiber, that's when you know there ain't too much fiber. tease open the locks prior may help. the better you tease/pick, the better the batt quality, usually anyway. if too much fiber clogs the space between the two drum, you can't turn the crank.happy carding!

that was what i did when i first started. there was little said about picking and there is little emphasis on teasing the ends of the lock open, i thought the drum carder was suppose to give me pretty batts after several passes whatever i throw at it...hehheh...

I just won my first pair of hand carders today. I am working on a dorper cross fleece that I just finished washing up yesterday. I really injoy hand picking and teasing. I am using a dog slicker brush as a flicker and it works beautifully...I didn't realize how difficult picking was until I started using the slicker brush to open up both ends of the lock. Parts of the fleece is 2 inches and the rest so far as been 3 inches. Mostly brown with some white I hope to have yarn from my wheel soon.[meow] I often wonder now that I have a long haired kitty if her fur would work well for yarn...will have to see.

I was thinking about buying dog slickers too, but I need to check how their performance compares to the different kinds of hand cards. (They probably will work, but maybe not well for all of the different kinds of fibers). That said, there are differentkinds/styles of slickers, too. They have flat or curved paddles, with softer or harder pins depending on how long/short the dog's coat is. On the more expensive slickers, there are more pins, but they offset each other, so you couldn't card the fiber without the pins hitting each other alot. Also, all of the paddles are held at an angle in relation to the handle. This might affect how comfortable it is to hold them and card for long periods. I haven't carded my own fiber yet, except to use my mother's slicker to card some cotton balls that I unrolled for spinning. (Yes it works, but it requires alot of twist, and I'm not sure how or what the resulting yarn will be useful for. It begs to plied, so thats what I'll do with it next, when I'm done with the singles).

Laurie, if you are serious about carding, I wouldn't bother with dog slickers - they are just too small to be efficient. I bought some at the very beginning of my spinning career because I wanted to start right NOW and would have had to wait for the delivery of real hand cards. But I haven't used them since having bought hand cards (and not a lot before). They are nice for trying out carding, or if you can't get hold of hand cards, but otherwise not worth buying.

On the other hand, I did just buy a pair of cow combs (actually, they are probably dog combs, but were sold for preparing cattle for the show ring) that look just like single-pitch mini combs and work beautifully (except they are also a bit smaller).

... I was told this by several people, that the Louet will cause noils due to the grinding/meshing of those gears, and that we are sold on the idea that what is being caught in those front mesh is the bad stuff, and it is, but that the carder is causing half of it! ...

After having my Louet Junior/Roving for 6 months and carding several pounds of wool (blend) with it I can say that neither part of this statement corresponds to my experience. The drumcarder does not cause noils - if I start out with combed top or first-class fleece the licker-in drum stays completely empty. On the other hand, if there's second cuts or bad tangles, the carder will let some of them through (it will also hold back some which makes for fibre build-up on the licker-in drum).

Now, I do use a feed tray and I do tease the fibres before feeding them in. And I can predict while teasing how much fibre will end up on the licker-in drum! My last carding action, one pound (454 g) of mohair (55%)/wool (45%) blend, resulted in 3 g of waste on the licker-in drum (less than 1 %) - I can live with that!

True, I've also had horrible fleeces where it looked like a third of the fibre ended up on the licker-in drum (didn't weigh, though), but that's because I just can't refuse free wool if it's an interesting colour!

On the whole I have absolutely no complaint about the Louet Junior/Roving carder. I do have a theory though, why people who sell other brands don't like to sell it: Because of the lower price there's less to earn for the retailer and there's not even any accessories or maintenance to sell: It comes complete with doffer brush and doffing awl, I don't see what a brush attachment would do, apparently nobody has thought about selling a feed tray for it - it's easy enough to make, in any case - and it seems maintenance free, als Valk Scot said. I also appreciate that there's no need to roll up the carded batt on a sheet of paper - I just pull it off.

By the way, my batts are around 1 ounce (generally I aim for 25 g for pure wool because that leads to 50 or 100 g skeins; for the mohair blend 29 g worked well for the quantities of fibre I had). The carder seems to work best for wool and other medium fibres - Angora and Ramie work fine up to 20 % (in a "wool sandwich") and I've never tried silk.

Oh, and I turn the crank sitting down, and I could turn it with two fingers - but three give a much better grip ;-)

Thanks to everyone who posted on this thread. I have been researching for the last two weeks, feeling i needed to buy a second drum carder. I bought a display model from the fricke's at convergence in seattle, so many years ago. I want finer carding cloth, but don't want to re-cloth mine, preferring to have the option of the coarser fabric. This old dependable still turns with ease.

I probably will go with a strauch finest, but don't know whether i will go for the extra width or not. I like to paint on the carder and the extra width may be fun. Any thoughts?

The only carder i know of which hasn't been mentioned is the one made for howard brush by anderson. Any knowledge of their product?

I will check back, to see if anyone updates this. I googled 'compare drum carders' in desperation and was so happy to find this thorough discussion!

I've been lurking. Just bought a Strauch Petite and was SURPRISED at how big it is for something with that particular name. The batts are big and fluffy. It is super-sturdy and well-made. And I got very good personal help from Mr. Strauch himself, who e-mailed me replies to questions within 24 hours, and even initiated the shipment BEFORE the dealer who sold it to me had paid him! He was going out of town and wanted to make sure I got it ASAP. Incredible service.

My big question was, "what is occasional use?" All the ads I was seeing said the Petite was for the occasional drumcarder...whatever that means. So I asked for clarification. I do under 10 fleeces per year. Mr. Strauch said the Petite would be perfect for that amount of use, and that the others were for more "constant" use (I guess drumcarding daily??) That helped.

I bought it with brush installed. Glad I bought the brush.

The first few batts took 4 passes to be really smooth and uniform, then I figured out the problem was too much fiber...operator error! I love this thing. Love to hug those batts, and think of how long it would have taken to hand-card the same amount of fluff. Kris

"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd." Flannery O'Connor

My carder arrived today like bill at coppermoose said! the ups driver knew i was anticipating and kidded me, but it really was on the truck! packed well, perfect, and i lucked out getting a stand which is almost perfect, a collapsible worktable, for woodworking, which makes it perfect for standing up and carding. carded only one batt, to 'clean it out' as they advised. lovely batt. happy me. again thanks to everyone to participated in this thread!

Hopetoknit, sorry for the delay but I didn't have the info before. I've never flicked locks myself, but the winter Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot has an article on spinning worsted without combs where they suggest flicking the locks. And if you don't want to spin them immediately, they suggest you put them in a box, all in the same direction (all tips on one side, all skin ends on the other side) and label the box accordingly. Well, the alignment and labelling is if you care about that (the author writes that for spinning true worsted all the fibres need to go into the orifice with the skin end first), otherwise there's no need to bother.

Azblue, are there actually any "negative reviews" of Louet drumcarders? The very negative comment in this thread was based on hearsay, not on experience. The people who have one (you, Valscot, me) are happy with it...

By the way, I've notice the parameter that has the biggest influence on carding quality is the quantity of fibre I put into the carder at one time. If it's too much, so that the fibre gets squeezed by the drums, I know I need another pass. Speed, on the other hand, matters very little (at least for the medium wools I've been carding lately) - meaning I can turn the handle as fast as is comfortable for me (which is a big relief and really speeds up getting a spinnable batt!).

Oh, I don't blame you (and my post wasn't meant to criticise you) - as far as I remember the comment in question was pretty much presented as fact, which just goes to show how careful one has to be with information on Internet so as to distinguish fact from fiction!

Fiber prep makes a huge difference in drum carding success! Someone ought to make a YouTube video showing what the wool should LOOK LIKE BEFORE it goes into the carder.

I'm definitely spending more time picking/teasing than carding, BUT the carding goes very fast when the fiber is well-prepared ahead of time. I have tried picking with a flick carder - it's harder on my hands (and doesn't make any difference in the finished product) than just teasing the locks open with my fingers. Can't wait to get my Thomas Creations picker...

It takes me about two hours to prepare 4 oz of fiber for carding by hand. I throw the tangly or neppy stuff away, so there is a slight amount of loss.

Kris

"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd." Flannery O'Connor

Please, let us know how it goes with your picker! I've just done another batch with mine (which was originally meant to loosen up mattress filling) and I'm pretty sure that it does a worse job than my fingers. It goes much faster, though (20 minutes for about a pound of fibre), and as I'll be facing some 150 school kids tomorrow (not all at once, though), and I want to give each a handful of fibre, I figured quantity is more important than quality. But when I'm processing nice wool for my spinning (or for sale) I'm pretty much back to teasing it open by hand.

Well, I'm not sure about the weight - but I did drumcard 10 batts afterwards, and my drumcarder holds 25 to 30 grams (i. e. about one ounce) and it looked as if I had taken about half of the wool out of the basket. Of course, I left all the VM in the wool while picking. And I took out only the very worst afterwards, which is why it took me something like 5 minutes to card a batt. Why spend more time and effort on wool that's never going to be spun up?

As I said, I'm not using a Pat Green Triple Picker, but one that was designed for loosening up mattress stuffing. Meaning the locks get roughly opened up (or ripped apart) and then fall out - that's it. There's no way you could spin the result into something even resembling smooth yarn. And even as preparation for drumcarding it's less than ideal. I'm writing this mainly as a warning for European spinners to think twice about spending big money on a "cardeuse à balancier" - it's not comparable to a picker designed for handspinners (well, I hope so for the people who bought a Triple Picker or a Thomas Creations picker - personally I've never seen what they can do).